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SPEECH 


OP 

HON. JEREMIAH S. BLACK, 

«i J 


DEMOCRATIC MASS CONVENTION 

^ IN LANCASTER CITY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1863. 


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I 


SPEECH OF HOE JEREMIAH S. BLACK. 




Fellow Citizens :— I have not accepted this 
invitation to address 3*011 with any hope of giv- 
ing you new light on the issues before the peo¬ 
ple. There are some things too plain for discus¬ 
sion, and the man who does not understand the 
f undamental principles now in contest, is be¬ 
low the reach of an argument. 

This Government—this Constitution and 
these laws—were made by the patriots of the 
Revolution to secure the blessings* of liberty 
to themselves and their posterity. Their blood 
and treasure expended upon the erection of 
the Government, gave them an inheritable es¬ 
tate in it which has come down in the regular 
course of descent to their heirs. We, the white 
men of America, are their heirs. 

The Government being our property, we 
have the same right to save it from overthrow 
by warning one another of its danger, that any 
one of you has to prevent the destruction of 
his house by raising the cry of fire when he 
sees the flames bursting from the roof. And 
this is a duty which will surely be performed ; 
lor the people of this country have been so long 
accustomed to speak plainly what they believe 
mcerely upon the subjects which concern 
their temporal salvation, that they could not 
be silent if they would. 

This great combination of independent sov¬ 
ereignties, uniting all the powers of a consoli¬ 
dated empire for the common defence and 
general welfare, with all the advantages of local 
self-government in our domestic affairs, was 
the grandest political structure ever made by 
human hands, and its preservation was the most 
sacred trust ever committed to any people on 
the globe. If we shall be compelled to close 
this contest without a restoration of the Union, 
our worst misfortunes are yet before us. No < 
imagination has measured the full extent of ; 
that calamity, or seen to the bottom of that j ; 
frightful abyss. If any one here feels pity for 
the Southern people, let him bestow it; not for 
the sufferings they have already endured, but 
for the evils which await them in case they j : 
succeed in the rash and rebe lions enterprise of j 1 
dissolution. Neither can we of the North look 
in the face of such a misfortune without dread < 
and terror. A simple commercial view of it ' 1 
(and that is the lowest of all views) is enough | I 
to startle us. Wo lose an internal trade with 1 


the South worth to us at least one hundred 
millions per annum in clear profits. We lose 
the larger part of that great foreign commerce 
which heretofore made all the world dependent 
on us. A financial revulsion must follow this 
bloated system of fictitious paper credit as 
surely as the night follows the day. With all 
these elements of weakness we must shoulder 
a debt of perhaps three thousand millions of 
dollars, Pennsylvania paying about twenty-five 
millions per annum as her ihare of the interest , 
a burden which even a prosperous people could 
hardly expect to carry without being crushed. 
With business everywhere paralyzed, property 
universally depreciated, in debt beyond hope 
of redemption, ground to the earth by taxa¬ 
tion, political insignificance in the eyes of the 
world, and a consciousness of national shame 
and degradation in our own hearts, we must be¬ 
gin the world again, like a broken hearted man 
who has lost his character, his property and 
his hope. 

When these things are recollected, let no 
man forget that the Democratic party is the 
only one which ever appreciated the value of 
the Union. No other ever made devotion to 
it a cardinal principle of its creed. There 
never was a time since that party first came 
into existence, when any man could remain in 
its communion for an hour if he showed indif¬ 
ference, much less if he expressed opposition, 
to the Union. When any one of its pretended 
members declared his willingness to let the 
Union slide, he was promptly notified to slide 
himself over to the opposition, and he always 
obeyed the order. If there be a man among 
us now who would not freely give all he has 
and all he is to bring back the Union to the 
condition in which it was three years ago, he 
is not in his proper place; he ought to be in 
secret conclave with the “loyal leaguers , ,y 
plotting against that Constitution and thoso 
laws which alone can bind the Union together. • 
That we are as true as ever to our ancient 
faith—that we have not given up one inch of 
the high ground we occupied in all time past 
—is proved, if proof were necessary, by the 
character of our present candidate for the 
highest office in the State. I thiuk I know 
that gentleman as well as one man can be 
known to another. I can say, with a profound 








4 


conviction of its truth, that no word has ever 
been heard from his lips, nor a line seen from 
his pen, which did not breathe the most fervent 
devotion to the Union. Indeed, he has been 
all his life time uncommonly sensitive to the 
dangers which threatened our national institu¬ 
tions. The Union of the States, with their 
rights unimpaired and all the liberties of the 
people protected, was and is the polar star of 
his political course and the supreme object of 
his affections. No man, even among the great 
patriots of the past age, has been more elo¬ 
quent in his warnings against disunion, or pre¬ 
dicted our present troubles more accurately. 
In a hundred conversations or a score of writ¬ 
ten communications, I, and many others, have 
seen the evidence of his love for the Federal 
Union and his hatred for every species of 
treason that might weaken or overthrow it.— 
Few persons have ever been in' contact with 
him, even for a short time, without being im¬ 
pressed with the great truths which make so 
large a pajt of his own strowg and clear under¬ 
standing. Friends and enemies admit his sin¬ 
cerity, for feelings so intense and convictions 
so habitually urged upon others, could not pos¬ 
sibly be counterfeited. He has fairly earned 
the title of a “ Union Saver.” He has deserved 
the sneer of the opposition when they said he 
sat constantly “beside the sick bed of the 
Union; 55 and if the Union is destined to ex¬ 
pire in the insanity of civil strife, his devoted 
affec ion will keep there to the last, “like love 
watching madness on the bed of death. 55 

It we had been in any sense opposed to the 
Government or unfaithful to the Union, would 
we have proposed such a candidate for Gover¬ 
nor? No: we would have nominated some 
black Abolitionist, who believes the Constitu¬ 
tion to be a covenant with hell, and who by 
destroying the Constitution would ma^re an 
end of the Union as certainly as you take the 
life of a man by cutting the heart out of his 
body. Or we would have worked out our de¬ 
structive purposes by nominating some mighty 
contractor—one of those large handed rob¬ 
bers who are weakening the Government by 
depleting its treasury and stuffing its money 
into their own big pockets. With such a 
man wielding all the power and influence of 
this great State, the Government surely could 
not last long. In short, if we had any evil 
intent against the Union, we would have taken 
any candidate we could lay our hands on rather 
than George Woodward, the Union Saver— 
the man of upright character and downright 
speech—whose hands are clean of all crime, 
and whose pockets are empty of all gains ex¬ 
cept what came there as the just reward of his 
honest labor. 

Much as we honor and love him personally, 
it is not for his sake that we desire to make him 
Governor. Setting aside his fidelity and ours 
to the National Government and Union, we 
could do something a great deal more for his 
profit than that. Let him avow his apostacy 
from the faith of his fathers ; let him prostitute 
his conscience and his intellect to the pur¬ 
poses of Abolitionism ; let him forget that he 
Vielongs to the Caucasian variety of the human 
species and enter the service of the negro ; let 


him make a few speeches to show' the superi¬ 
ority of the African over the Saxon race ; let 
him contrive the ways and means of promoting 
negro insurrections and always stand ready to 
take the part of the negro right or wrong; 
above all, let him denounce the Constitution as 
it is and curse the Union as it was; let him aban¬ 
don the principles of liberty in which he was 
bred, and degrade himself low enough to call 
every freeman a traitor who is not w illing to be 
a slave. If he will do this he may get a con¬ 
tract on which he can cheat the United States 
at the rate of a hundred thousand dollars a 
month. If his inexperience should make him 
awkward, and he should be detected and ex¬ 
posed so that even his confederates in knavery 
are compelled to admit his guilt, there would 
still be a resource for him. When the worst 
comes to the worst, we can get him a foreign 
mission—send him to cool his blushes in the 
snow's of Russia or harden the bronze upon his 
cheek under the hot uin of Spain. 

But stealing the public money or trampling 
on the Constitution is not his idea of loyalty or 
yours either. He would restore the Union by 
defending the Constitution, by giving to the 
laws their just supremacy, by guarding the 
rights of the people, and by driving off those 
obscene birds of prey that are now gorging 
themselves on the prostrate carcass of the 
nation. 

I know r there are those w’ho think that the 
Union never can be restored ; who believe that 
the great gulf of blood and fire which now rolls 
between the North and the South has been 
made by this Administration so wide and so 
deep that it will remain forever impassable. I am 
not one of those who regard restoration as a 
forlorn hope. Every man who has sense enough 
to know his right hand from his left must be¬ 
lieve that, if the Democratic party had been 
successful in 1860 , this country w r ould now 
have been united, prosperous, happy and tran¬ 
quil. The American flag would have waved 
over every inch of our territory, “ not one star 
extinguished nor one stripe erased. 55 And no 
concession to the South would have been made 
or needed beyond what w'as required by the 
Constitution or demanded by that magnanimity 
which the stronger party ought always show in 
its treatment of the weaker. As our troubles 
began with the advent of the Abolitionists to 
power, so they will end when the people 
scourge back that band of malignants to the 
obscurity from which they ought never to have 
emerged. The Democratic party built up this 
Government, kept the Union together for 
seventy-five years, and was always ready “ to 
shield it and save it or perish there too. 55 The 
same party will bring back the better days of 
the Republic and remove, if not immediateiy, 
at least in process of time, that huge mountain 
of sorrow' which is now crushing the life out of 
the country. 

One thing is perfectly certain : that if the 
Union is ever restored, it must be on the basis 
of the constitution and law's. Other hope cf 
salvation to us there is none under Heaven.— 
When the constitution was put aside and an¬ 
other system of government, compounded of 
proclamations and confiscation acts, was sub- 







5 


stituted in its place, all possible chances of the 
Union were postponed until the constitution 
could be brought back again. When you re¬ 
quire the Southern people to obey the consti¬ 
tution and the laws which were made by their 
fathers as well as ours, it is but their reasona¬ 
ble duty to submit, and if they do not see it so, 
it is our duty to make them. But it is a wide¬ 
ly different thing when you offer them a con¬ 
fiscation act which strips them of land and 
goods, coupled with a proclamation which lets 
loose four millions of ignorant negroes, with 
Abolition preachers among them to incite in¬ 
surrection and urge the indiscriminate slaugh¬ 
ter of the white inhabitants. Whether they 
ought to give themselves up to this appalling 
fate, is a question which I leave to be decided 
by those who have the authority. But that 
they will never voluntarily consent to a union 
with us upon such terms, I think is certain.— 
If they did, would that be the Union that 
Washington made ? Would not a union with¬ 
out a constitution be as dangerous to us as to 
them ? How long would a union removed from 
the rock of the constitution and rebuilt upon 
the sandy foundation of a proclamation, be able 
to stand when the winds blow and the rains 
beat against it ? 

That there is something radically and fatal¬ 
ly wrong in a war which has for its object a 
negro proclamation inconsistent with the white 
.mans constitution, is a self evident truth which 
pervades the whole popular mind. The ne ro 
policy has changed the public feeling every 
where North and South. When Mr. Lincoln 
sent his first message to Congress, he declared 
it to be his opinion that there was not a majori¬ 
ty for Secession in any State of the Union, ex¬ 
cept perhaps South Carolina. He was right. 
Nine-tenths of the Southern people were then 
as true to the Union as any part of the 
North, and far truer than New England ever 
was. The North was as nearly unanimous as 
any equal number of people could be on any 
subject. Where now are our union friends in 
the South? And where is the Northern en¬ 
thusiasm which two years ago marshalled the 
whole population into “ranks and squadrons, 
and right forms of war?” Let the Conscrip¬ 
tion law answer. Away then with these negro 
measures; give us back our constitution and 
our laws—let us have these to fight for, and a 
million of true hearts will leap to the conflict, 
where now there is nothing but apathy or some¬ 
thing worse. 

The men whose influence brought about this 
fatal policy have done it with the wilful and 
malicious intention to prevent the restoration 
of the Union. It was not a mere blunder, but 
a crime against the country deliberately per¬ 
formed. Let us do justice to our opponents. 
The masses of the Republican party (so called) 
did not mean it; even their leaders were mis¬ 
led. The President is technically responsible, 
but not in the sense of intending all the conse¬ 
quences. It was done by that ultra Abolition 
party whose principal seat of power is New 
England, with disciples thinly scattered over 
the Middle and Western States. That is the 
power behind the throne greater than the 
throne isell ; that is the influence which shapes 


all our measures of civil administration and 
regulates the flow of our blood in the field. 
These are the men who rule us for their plea¬ 
sure and plunder us for their profit. 

They avowed their purpose of destroying 
this government more than thirty years ago. 
They made no secret of the malignant hatred 
they bore to the institutions established by our 
Revolutionary ancestors. They wrought ear¬ 
nestly in season and out of season to excite in¬ 
surrection and murder in the Southern States. 
They did not wait for war to legalize bloodshed. 
When one of their m mber, as coarse a ruffian 
as they had among them, an impostor, a thief, 
a traitor and a murderer, sneaked at midnight 
into a peaceful village to organize a general 
system of butchery and actually commenced 
shooting down the unsuspecting inhabitants, 
while he plundered the government property, 
the Abolitionists of New England clapped their 
hands, applauded and rejoiced with exceeding 
joy. They uttered the most furious maledic¬ 
tions against the authorities for arresting him ; 
when he was hung they mourned him as a 
martyr ; when he was buried they pronounced 
funeral eulogies over his grave; at this day 
they worship his memory and sing hymns in 
his honor. By their fruits ye shall know them. 
There can be no mistake about the patriotism, 
the honesty, or the benevolence, of a party 
that canonises a traitor, a thief and a murderer. 

While other parties were discussing ques¬ 
tions of policy which concerned the prosperity 
of the country, the Abolitionists were planning 
the destruction of the whole fabric; while others 
wrangled about tariff's, banks and improvements, 
they kept aloof, cautiously and cunningly con¬ 
triving how they mighc engulf the whole nation 
in a sea of blood. As a tiger crouching at the 
edge of his jungle waits for the right moment 
to spring upon his victim to crunch his bones 
and lap his life blood, so Abolitionism waited 
and watched for the opportunity to make its 
fatal spring upon the Federal Government. 

The Constitution stood in their way and 
they spurned it as an agreement with hell. 
The Gospel of God was opposed to them and 
their conventicles resounded with ribald blas¬ 
phemies against the Christian religion. Com¬ 
mon honesty forbade the gross breach of faith 
they contemplated, and they invented a new 
system of morality called “higher law,” which 
when it came to be defined meant nothing but 
the impulse of their own unregulated passions. 
The Democracy saw through their designs and 
warned the country against them; and they 
slandered us with all the brutal strength of 
criminals. 

The adherents and sympathizers of this 
party attempt to excuse their hostility to the 
government of the white man by ascribing it 
to love for the negro. But of all the cants 
that were ever canted in this hypocritical age, 
the Abolition cant of humanity to the negro is 
the most disgustingly hollow and false. The 
men who have no drops of mercy for their own 
race cannot possibly have any human feeling 
for another. Besides they know very well 
that a contest for negro equality in this coun¬ 
try must necessarily terminate in making the 
negro’s condition a thousand times worse. 






6 


They cannot hope to eeo the Anglo Saxons of 
America sink in their own blood as the French 
inhabitants of St. Domingo did before the 
negroes of that island. No; they know that 
when their policy is pushed to the last ex¬ 
tremity, the negro can have no ultimate chance 
against the white man. Their object is in¬ 
tensely and purely selfish. They desired to 
kindle the flames of civil war throughout the 
country, reckless who might suffer so that they 
could but remain masters of the burnt and 
blackened field. 

I think there can be no mistake in saying 
that these Abolitionists are opposed to the 
Union, and that the measures they sustain are 
intended to prevent its restoration. Ask the 
man who is their undoubted leader in this 
county and State—the man whose talents en¬ 
title him to that bad eminence—and he will 
tell you what he has often said, in public as 
well as in private, that it sickens him to hear 
of the Constitution as it is and the Union as it 
was. Think for a moment of this most atrocious 
sentiment. The “Constitution as it is” is the 
fundamental law of the land, which they swore 
to obey ; and now they would insult the God 
who was their witness, by declaring that oath 
to be a sham, and their s lemn covenant with 
the country a delusion and a snare. The Union 
as it was results from the Con titution as it is, 
and this nation, which has bled for it at every 
pore, is to be told that all their terrible sacri¬ 
fices of life and property shall go for nothing, 
because, forsooth, their rulers are sick of the 
Union. The history of the world gives no 
account of any other people who became the 
dupes of such an awful imposture. The men 
who propose to perpetrate it are not only 
treacherous and unfaithful to a sacred trust; 
they are remorseless as death and cruel as the 
grave. 

But how came it that a party so insignificant 
in numbers and so destitute of general confi¬ 
dence should acquire so complete an ascend¬ 
ency in the public councils. Their own vote 
was probably not one-tenth of the people, and 
the other nine-tenths would as soon have poll¬ 
ed all the mad houses of the country*and 1 
selected the wildest lunatics they could find to 
rule over them,as to have given the New Eng¬ 
land Abolitionists the reins of their govern¬ 
ment. They got their power by a series of base 
frauds. They went into the Chicago Conven¬ 
tion declaring themselves entirely satisfied with 
the exclusion of slavery from the territories. 
Although that would not make one slave more 
or less, they averred that the pleasure of in¬ 
sulting and defying the judicial authorities, by 
getting a decisiou of the Supreme Court re¬ 
versed by a conveution of boss politicians , 
would “ wrap them up in measureless con¬ 
tentment.” They agreed to a self-denying 
resolution abjuring all power and all intention 
to interfere with the rights of the States on the 
subject of slavery or any other subject. How 
did they keep that pledge ? If any Republican 
would now dare to stand on that plank of the 
platform, he would be bullied out of counte¬ 
nance. 

But it was necessary to gain still further 
power by another lulse pretence. When the 


war broke out, they—the same men who had 
plotted the destruction of the Union for thirty 
years—shouted for the Union so loudly that 
nearly all believed them sincere. That shout 
for the Union thrilled the heart of the whole 
Democracy, and they crowded all the ways to 
the battle field as if they were going to a festi¬ 
val. When the disaster at the first battle of 
Bull Run made another uprising necessary, 
they put on the records of Congress a solemn 
declaration that the war was not for conquest 
or subjugation, but solely for the Union as it 
was before the war, and for the Constitution 
with all the rights of the States and people 
unimpaired. Again the Democratic response 
was universal, enthusiastic and efficient. 

These repeated pledges were shamefully 
broken. The Abolitionists went to the Presi¬ 
dent and insisted on having a proclamation 
which would openly trample them down. The 
President refused—refused for many good rea¬ 
sons. The argument by which he justified his 
refusal was certainly the most respectable one 
he ever made in his life. It became necessary, 
therefore, to impose upon him also. They 
promised that if he would issue the proclama¬ 
tion, nine hundred thousand volunteers would 
be forthcoming to strengthen the army. I am 
not aware that a single man of these nine hun¬ 
dred thousand ever made his appearance. They 
soon threw off the mask entirely, and got a 
conscription law to compel others to fight the 
battles. When the draft went into Massachu¬ 
setts, that State, with the “ hardy population” 
of which we had heard so much, suddenly be¬ 
came the sickliest spot on the continent. Forty- 
seven per cent. (I think that is the proportion) 
were afflicted with divers diseases, which ren¬ 
dered them incapable of doing military duty. 
The others, when they were drafted, either ran 
away to Canada or else paid their commutation 
like the rest of us. 

It is by these repeated breaches of faith that 
the Abolitionists got the power which they are 
now abusing. The Republicans, the Demo¬ 
crats and the executive administration, have 
been successively overreached by them; and 
they have used their advantages always against 
the Constitution and the Union. There are 
men among us who would be very indignant 
if they were cheated in a horse trade or de¬ 
frauded of ten dollars by a false token, aud 
yet they look without emotion on the impos¬ 
tures by which the nation is swindled out of 
its life. 

Not only that part of the Constitution which 
effects the relations of the States is in danger, 
but those common liberties which every free¬ 
man of the race we belong to has enjoyed for 
three hundred years, are in imminent, peril. I 
need not enumerate the outrages perpetraied 
on individual rights. The Democrats have 
steadily protested against them, and resisted 
them wherever they could. Every patriotic 
Republican has seen them with sadness and 
sorrow, and if the Abolitionists have approved 
of them, it is only as part of their general sys¬ 
tem of insult and contempt for tbe Constitu¬ 
tion and laws. 

Though none justify, and few will even try 






to excuse a bold and open outrage on the laws, 
there are those who tell you that it is unim¬ 
portant at such a crisis as this in comparison 
with other great interests at stake. Do not 
suffer yourselves to be cajoled out of your lib¬ 
erties in this way. Every wilful violation of 
law is a thing of transcendant importance if it 
is not instantly rebuked and punished. Crimes 
against public liberty never stop where they 
begin. Those who commit them get on a down 
hill track where there is no halting place unless 
the people themselves apply the breaks. One 
outrage begets another. A single individual is 
kidnapped, and twenty others are taken for 
complaining of it. All is insufficient if the 
habeas corp us is not repealed, and the Execu¬ 
tive must, therefore, take upon himself a power 
*-*• which the Legislature alone can exercise. The 
officers who stand up for law and justice must 
" be deposed and imprisoned—and if a majority 
of votes can be influenced neither by venality or 
fear the right of suffrage will be forcibly vio¬ 
lated. Then we are wholly enslaved. The 
truest man may be dragged from his bed at 
midnight and torn away from his shrieking 
family to prison or to exile. The most re¬ 
spectable woman may be taken, as Mrs. Brins- 
inade was in New York, thrust into a dungeon, 
kept there for weeks, debarred all communi¬ 
cation with her family and friends, while she 
was exposed to the daily and nightly insults 
of the beastly knaves who had her in their 
power. . If you think that your local courts 
might still give you protection, remember the 
case of Judge Carmichael, who laid down the 
law as he conscientiously believed it to be—as 
\ it certainly was—and as he knew the peace of 
society required that it should be—and, be¬ 
cause the law did not please the Abolitionists, 
was dragged from the bench by a band of 
ruffians, knocked down with the butt ends 
of their pistols and carried away to pri¬ 
son, where he was kept for eleven mortal 
months. 

Such has been the history of these encroach¬ 
ments in all past time. They begin with petty 
violations of justice and swell with frightful 
rapidity into the most stupendous crimes.— 
Their first victim is a solitary helpless and per¬ 
haps unpopular individual, but they end by 
forcing the yoke on the necks of millions. 

The people of Holland live in a country 
where the land is several feet below the level 
of the sea. They protect themselves against 
constant inundation by a large earthwork which 
they call a dyke, extending all along the coast. 
What they are most troubled with is a large 


species of raf, which burrows under and makes 
holes through their dyke. Now a rat hole is 
not a very alarming thing in itself; but the 
action of the water makes it larger every mo¬ 
ment. If it be neglected for a single night, by 
the time the morning dawns, the rat hole has 
widened into a huge crevasse , the ocean goes 
pouring through it, and the whole land is laid 
under water. So it is with the Constitution, 
which is our dyke. If the smallest breach is 
once made in it, “the ever toiling wave of ar¬ 
bitrary power” which is continually surging 
up against it, will constantly enlarge it until 
all protection for our rights is washed away. 
I tell you gentlemen, if you desire to save one 
remnant of your liberties, you must watch the 
rat holes in your Constitution. 

But there is a necessity, some tell us, for these 
violations of law. It is wonderful that any 
man possessed of reason could be imposed on 
by an excuse so weak, so shallow and so child¬ 
ish. This necessity has often been urged as a 
reason for acts that everybody condemned ; it 
has never in all the worlds history, had the 
sanction of one true patriot, or one great states¬ 
man ; but it has been branded as “the tyrants 
plea” by the universal sense of all mankind.— 
By all our ancestors in the old world, by all 
our revolutionary heroes, by all who adminis¬ 
tered our government heretofore, the necessity 
was always thought to be precisely the other 
way. The supreme necessity which presided 
j over all others was obedience to the law. That 
1 is the very purpose and the only purpose for 
which magistrates are chosen. When a man 
who is appointed and sworn to guard the laws, 

' and see them faithfully executed, tells you that 
he will necessarily violate them himself and 
encourage others to do likewise, your plain 
and obvious answer must be that he is not fit 
for his business. 

All these heresies must be extirpated before 
we can hope for.peace, or protection, or Union 
or prosperity. But the election of Woodward 
will be the forerunner of a national triumph for 
the Democratic party. When that happens, 
though we cannot certainly promise, we can 
reasonably hope for a restoration of the Union. 
If our Abolition enemies leave the country in 
a salvable state it will be saved, and this great 
nation will start on a new career, whose glories 
j will make the splendors of the past look dim 
! in comparison. At all events we can bring 
j back the reign of order and law, under which 
, every citizen who is conscious of his innocence 
i may breathe the deep breath and sleep the 
I sound sleep of a freeman. 





































































































































































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